


like a force to be reckoned with

by antarcticas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Burns, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Short One Shot, Soul Bond, Zuko's Childhood (Avatar), Zuko's Scar (Avatar), another take on canon, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25460821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antarcticas/pseuds/antarcticas
Summary: When Katara is eleven she falls apart under a starry night sky and stays feverish for days, flames alight on the left side of her face until the skin goes numb to the touch. The contours of her body all reflect, unmarred against the glass icebergs of her home; the stories underneath are what matter, tales of pride and lies and betrayal against bone.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 174





	like a force to be reckoned with

Katara was born cursed in someone else’s name.

Some days she is sitting at the fire and laughing with the rest of the tribe when she keels over, choking up blood, and her mother takes her away. Other times she is playing with the rest of the children and one of them throws a snowball a little too hard and she falls unconscious. All she can do is lie down and grit her teeth together and ask the spirits for forgiveness.

There is fear in the eyes of her parents like they are afraid of something, and there is also pain for her and the invisible flames that climb down her back. It starts when she is three.

By the time she is seven she knows about the war and the Southern Raiders who roam the seas. She knows about the three remaining types of benders and she knows about the fire people and what they have done to her. But she doesn’t realize the connection until she walks a little too close to their cooking fire one day and the skin of her hand turns red and starts blistering and she doesn’t notice because her body rejects the feeling, because it is all too familiar to her flesh.

Who is burning her soulmate?

When she is eight they come for her mother and her father tells her what it all means. There are two possibilities: they are either a firebender or being tortured by the Fire Nation. But he says the second part with an addendum: they would not have kept them alive for so long. And at that she wants to jump back and crawl up into her skins for an eternity. 

She thinks about how delicately she is kept, how she is not allowed to do anything which might leave her already tingling nerves vulnerable. She feels hatred for the Fire Nation but she doesn’t hate her soulmate, even if they have done this to her. Something wraps itself around her ribcage and she holds her hands over her heart and prays to Tui and La that they will be okay. That one day she will find them and she will be able to take away the scars of childhood.

Such promises are hard to make in war.

After that year the burns start to wrap around her arms, growing larger and constant, and they’re accompanied by small cuts that look more like accidents than anything else. She feels them and then looks at the silver lines that are sparsely spread on her brother’s arms. The marks of a warrior; there are calluses underneath the skin of her palms, smooth as they are. 

She keeps her peace and her father leaves and her grandmother soothes her when she must. Soon she can create tiny balls of snow with her powers, raise the ocean a little, but she can’t catch fish. It’s worthless, doing all these things in a tribe that values communal good. She’s a liability because of someone she does not even know. It is only because of her family that she is kept as she is. She is lucky for this in ways that they are not. She sings to the sparks behind her eyes, trying to let them know that she is here, that she will always be.

When Katara is eleven she falls apart under a starry night sky and stays feverish for days, flames alight on the left side of her face until the skin goes numb to the touch. The contours of her body all reflect, unmarred against the glass icebergs of her home; the stories underneath are what matter, tales of pride and lies and betrayal against bone. 

Even her grandmother does not have a platitude to tell her. She throws freezing water against her face and feels nothing against her eye. She can see and she counts herself lucky, but then she looks out to the endless ocean and wants to leave. She will meet them in the future and she will know them intimately — and yet how will she be able to tell, reconcile all of this? She wants what her parents had, peace and love and small wounds. 

The person she shares a soul with has a body that is a battleground and she hates these wars.

* * *

  
  


When Katara is fourteen she goes out with her brother after she begs him because he feels guilty. Then they fight and get stuck and her powers surge and she finds a boy stuck in ice. He is the Avatar.

She is happy because this means the end of one war. She has not felt the pain on her back in ages, just small bruises against her palms, so she can hope a little that the other one might be over as well. This is an opportunity, a way to go out into the world. A way to bend and a way to find her soulmate.

And then a ship comes along with a boy in a strange ponytail who shoots fire and wants the Avatar. She pulls away from him as he holds her grandmother in front of him; all she can see is the fiery scar across his face, all she can feel is fear in her bones when she realizes this is the Prince of the Fire Nation. This is who she has been sending her prayers to, a bender who is punching out the heat she knows so intimately.

She should tell him because he doesn’t know — how could he? She wanted to leave to find him and he is right here. This is what she wanted. 

She flies away from one fate on an air bison, her hand pressed to her face, heart beating against her chest readying itself for regret.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't even like this but i needed to get it out of my system thank you for reading :)


End file.
